Burdened by my stuff

It's been a bit of a tough week, as you may know if you read my previous Extra Post 2. There were times when I was really wondering why on earth I had so much dollshouse stuff and if I even wanted it all. As I unpacked the stash I inherited from my sadly-missed friend, I was wondering if someone would eventually be doing the same with my stash(es).  I think once I have a desk set up I want to go through all my dollshouse projects to see what still needs doing to them and whether I still want to keep each one. Then once all the work is done, I need to go through the remaining stash and see if I can't considerably whittle it down.  I'm looking into joining the nearest dollshouse club, so I may be able to re-home things there once I'm ready.

Sewing

Earlier in the week, in between bursts of unpacking, I finished off the dressmaking mannequin. The measurements are similar to mine, some may be a cm or two out but it's a reasonable representation of me.  The neckline and armholes are finished with bias binding and the bottom of the cover is cinched in with a drawstring.

sooooo flattering.....  :(

As a reward for finishing the mannequin, which I had been procrastinating about for some time, I have cut out a Friendship Braid tablerunner using instructions from the Craftsy video by Debbie Caffrey for easy rotary cutting using a HST ruler and 2.5 inch strips. It's going together fairly quickly and I think I am going to have pieces left over so I may make a smaller one for m-i-l.

Knitting

The Knitmore Girls podcast has a segment called 'When Knitting Attacks' and I've certainly been attacked by mine this week.  I've been knitting on the Rowan Summer Tweed cardigan, and I got as far as casting off for the armholes.  It wasn't until I held it up to check for length that I realised I had completely forgotten to decrease for the front neckline slopes.  So I ripped out half of it and started over.  I soon got myself into a complete muddle trying to translate three sets of flat knitting instructions into one set of knitting-in-the-round instructions, and ended up having to make a spreadsheet showing row-by-row shaping from the waist upwards (not helped by an apparent error in the stitch count for the back).

So I laboriously knit it back up to the armholes and tried it on my mannequin to see how it was looking for length and fit.

Length looks good

But way too much fullness in the back

I know from having used this yarn before that the finished garment will grow even more, so with a certain amount of bitter resignation, I ripped it back to the waist AGAIN and now I'm reknitting and eliminating the back increases.  Grrrr.  Hope the blessed thing fits when it's done.

Other stuff

Otherwise this week I've started the first bobbin lace pricking in Bucks Point lace, and I'm getting on ok apart from the thread is much finer and I've had some trouble seeing what's going on when I've gone wrong.  I've knocked out a few more 10x10 squares of cross stitching and was able to scroll the frame on by an inch or so to progress the pattern - so I can see the halfway point but I'm not there yet.

And today I took a pack of plastic plant labels and a chinagraph pencil out to the garden, and stuck a label into all the perennial plants that came up and surprised me this summer, so that I know where they are once they disappear into the ground again.  We also entertained the neighbours by estimating how high a tree we could plant in the garden without blocking our satellite dish.  This involved DH manoeuvring an 18m construction of bamboo sticks duct-taped together into one long length while I stood on a ladder sighting along the satellite dish arm.  Then I went in the house and called out directions for where he should move the 'tree' to block out the view of the new flats being built at the bottom of the garden.  We will dig up some of our shrubs this autumn and plant the tree, which needs to have a maximum height of 5m so I need to look in my plant books to choose one.  It will only partially help with the privacy issue because the block of flats is so tall.